Never Leave Your Heart Alone
by K. Elisabeth
Summary: The final part in the series of shots starting with "Break Even". Booth and Brennan finally confront their issues. BB, titled after the song "Never Leave Your Heart Alone" by Butterfly Boucher.


**A/N:** Finally, the last part. I originally saw this as just being one piece, then it became two, then three... I think five is a good stopping place. I hope you agree. Enjoy, and let me know what you think.

* * *

_Am I frozen? But it's summer  
Is that rain or is that me?  
Yes I'm melting  
Please be happy  
One day soon we might just swim_

_The moral to the story goes  
Never leave your heart  
In a box, locked up with cold, cold ice  
Never leave your heart  
Never leave your heart  
Never leave your heart alone_

_- Never Leave Your Heart Alone, Butterfly Boucher_

* * *

They decided to meet at the Founding Fathers since their old haunt, the Royal Diner, was closed for renovations. It was neutral territory, and that was good. Meeting at either of their places was out of the question—with beds and toothbrushes and blankets kicked to the ground, it was just too charged, too intimate. They couldn't meet at the lab either because the lab was hers, and couldn't meet at the Hoover building because that was his. But the bar was neutral, it was neither of theirs. It was both of theirs.

She picked a table in the back corner of the bar, the smoky red glass shade casting a sultry crimson hue over everything. Even though it was just past three in the afternoon it was unnaturally dark outside, the orange lamps illuminating the sidewalk and street, icy rain glittering in the light's path. She peeled the gloves off of her frigid fingers and laid them on the edge of the table, repositioning them so that the fingers lined up perfectly. Two perfect pieces, one single outline around their edges.

The back of the chair felt rigid against her back as she waited impatiently. Her toe tapped against the table, hands wringing in her lap. She tried to look put together, composed, unified. She tried to look like she wasn't fraying around the edges, like she had gotten some sleep last night, like she hadn't redrawn her eye liner three times because she kept hating the mirror and crying out of anger and screwing it up the way she had screwed everything else up. She tried to look like she wasn't detonating inside, and in the back of this bar, hidden by the dim light and the dark weather, she thought she was doing a pretty good job.

She saw the bulk of his body fill the doorframe as he stepped into the warmth of the bar, shaking slush off of his shoulders and brushing flecks of ice out of his hair. With his puffy winter coat he looked even larger, or maybe it was just that her memory of him was slowly diminishing. He was becoming smaller and smaller in her mind, shrinking into the distance. It had been almost two months since she last saw him. Two hours ago when they spoke on the telephone, she had barely recognized his voice when he picked up. She was so stunned by her lack of memory that she paused on the other end, unable to crack open her lips and speak.

_"Hello?" he repeated. She coughed._

_ "Hi," was all she could manage. There was a long, tense pause._

_ "Hi," he said hesitantly. Neither of them spoke for a while, until he finally said, "Is that all?"_

_ "No," she said quickly, fearing that her panic was clear in her cracked voice. "I… how are you?"_

_ "Fine," he said tersely. "How was Africa?" She almost laughed. He posed the question so calmly, so plainly, as if nothing in the world were wrong. Everything about it was wrong._

_ "I would like to see you," she said in a slow, metered way, struggling to master herself. "I think we should talk." He seemed to ruminate on the idea, then cleared his throat._

_ "Okay," he said. "We'll talk."_

And now they were here. She tried to raise her hand up to wave him over, but found that she couldn't. Her arms were useless weights, and she could only turn her chin up slightly and furrow her brows, eyes anxious, hoping he caught her gaze. He did, and she was quite sure she saw him freeze to the spot for a moment. His hands stopped unzipping his coat half-way down as his eyes met hers, and she felt herself burn under his stare. She was wrong—her memory hadn't diminished at all. It only needed to be sparked, and now it smoldered.

Her heart pounded in her chest and her hands wrought the edge of her coat anxiously as he forced himself towards the table, lips pressed tightly together, giving her a little nod as he came close. Suddenly she realized just how small the table was. It wasn't a table meant for adults at all—it was too small, meant for children or dolls. They were too big, the issue was too large to be adequately ferreted out over such a small surface.

He sat down in the chair opposite hers, and she felt his knees brush against hers. Her entire body surged with a tingling rush—it was the first time he had touched her in six weeks. The first time she had felt a part of him make contact with her, even something as innocuous and unintended as touching knees under a table—because given the look on his face, she was quite sure he did not mean to touch her at all—and it surged through her like ecstasy. He made an abrupt facial expression that was apology mingled with disgust, and the soaring high within her crashed immediately. She was right; he wanted nothing to do with her.

"Hi," he finally said, tossing his gloves haphazardly onto the table next to hers. They almost slid off the edge, and reflexively both of them reached out to stop the gloves from falling to the ground. Their hands brushed, and as if making contact with a high-voltage wire they drew back sharply. He brought his hand around the back of his neck and rubbed it; she rested hers in her lap so that he could not see her anxiety manifest itself in her wringing.

"It's still raining," she observed, not knowing what else to say. He nodded.

"Sleet, really," he said. "Almost snow. It's getting colder." She pursed her lips together, having no response. Something about the bitter, cliché taste of their inane small-talk about weather was driving her to her breaking point, and she did not know why. She breathed in slow, measured breaths through her nose and pressed the corners of her eyes with her thumb and index finger.

"How is Parker?" she finally asked. Booth's face darkened, and she immediately wished she hadn't.

"He's fine," he said.

"Booth, I…"

"He misses the hell out of you," he interrupted quietly, looking down at the whorls in the wood tabletop. "I haven't told him you're back yet, but he really misses you. He asks about you all the time."

"What did you tell him?" Brennan asked hesitantly. Booth sighed, rubbing his face in his hands vigorously as if he were trying to wake up.

"I told him you were in Africa, helping people," he said. "That's all."

"I missed him too," she said quietly. "And you."

"You hurt him," Booth spat, his rage seeming to finally come to a head. "I mean you really hurt him. He cried. He thought you didn't care about him." Her face dropped and she began shaking her head.

"I never meant to…"

"What was he supposed to think?" Booth cut off angrily, his voice barely in check. "When you just up and leave and don't even say goodbye? What was he supposed to think about that? He's nine years old, for Christ's sake. He doesn't understand. Hell, I still don't understand."

At this point she had begun to cry, soundless tears escaping and tracing their way down her features. She made no noise, clawing to seize hold of whatever shred of composure she had left. Her expression was stoic, but her eyes betrayed her completely. Her hand shot up from her lap to wipe the wet tracks off of her face, and Booth could not look at her.

"I'm sorry," she finally said, her voice thick.

"You hurt him," Booth repeated. "If it was just me, I could forgive you. But you hurt my son, Temperance. I don't know if I can forgive that."

"I don't blame you," she barely said, now losing complete control over herself. She rose from the table, trying to partially cover her face with her hand. She felt like a fool for even trying—it was clear she had done irreversible damage. There was nothing left here to fix.

"Temperance…"

"I wouldn't forgive me either," she said as she started walking away. She felt a hand grab her arm and hold it tightly, burning straight through her sleeves to her skin.

"Are you really going to run again?" he asked. He would not look up at her, and she could not look down at him. He let go of her arm and she stayed put, rooted to the spot.

"It's clear that you have no interest in making amends," she said, forcing the wave of overwhelming emotion aside so as to form a clear, coherent sentence.

"I didn't say I wouldn't forgive you," he said. "I didn't say I don't want to. I said I don't know if I can." She evaluated the difference between desire and ability—like the difference between loving someone and leaving them in the middle of the night—and she took a few steps back, lowering herself into her chair again.

"Will you try?" she asked.

Finally they both looked up simultaneously, making direct and intentional eye contact. He could see the messy smudge of liner around the corners of her eyes, the redness, and the ragged, sunken quality that her face seemed to have taken on in such a brief period of time. She looked like she had been to hell and back. Maybe she had.

She could see the shadow of stubble around his face, a lack of care and attention paid to his appearance that she had not seen in a long time. He always gelled his hair. He always shaved. He always looked ready to take on the world, but today he looked as if he had barely made it out of bed. She had been right the first time—he did look smaller.

"I'll try."

oOoOoOoOo

She sat on the bench, feeling the cool breeze rake through her hair. The sun baked her neck and shoulders, free of a jacket for the first time in months. The sky was an unerring blue, high and endless—spring was finally here. She unscrewed the cap of her water bottle and took a sip, watching black and orange wings floating on the wind, bouncing between the bright violet petals of each cluster of butterfly bush.

Another gust blew by, and she felt like she too was floating on it. She shut her eyes and smiled, feeling the cool, fluid fingers, almost like water, rush over her face. She heard a snicker from her right.

"What?" she asked, eyes still shut.

"Nothing," he said. "You just look happy."

She turned to face him, eyes squinting through the bright sunlight. He was chewing on the plastic straw sticking out of his oversized Styrofoam cup, grinning at her. She smiled.

"I am."


End file.
